Quote from mrodgers :

If your side mirrors are set correctly, you do not see your car in the mirror.

I did learn that different.
I was taught to have just a bit of your own car in the side-mirror, to have a reference point when judging the position of cars around you in relation to your own car.

And a car that is behind you should be visible in more than one mirror. The center mirror has a pretty wide angle to give you a general overview of whats happening behind you. The side mirrors are for "detail view" to either side. That's what I was taught anyway.

Quote from Torben :

I did learn that different.
I was taught to have just a bit of your own car in the side-mirror, to have a reference point when judging the position of cars around you in relation to your own car.

And a car that is behind you should be visible in more than one mirror. The center mirror has a pretty wide angle to give you a general overview of whats happening behind you. The side mirrors are for "detail view" to either side. That's what I was taught anyway.

Agreed.

You must ALWAYS be able to see a little bit of your own car (even if it's just a millimetre or two) to have a reference.

Quote from Torben :

I did learn that different.
I was taught to have just a bit of your own car in the side-mirror, to have a reference point when judging the position of cars around you in relation to your own car.

And a car that is behind you should be visible in more than one mirror. The center mirror has a pretty wide angle to give you a general overview of whats happening behind you. The side mirrors are for "detail view" to either side. That's what I was taught anyway.

true

But I think its true that we would get better used to the view from car if there were such things like parts of car in windows with a realistic mirror reflection. Its not so easy to determine distance if you see something quite off and also dont have nothing to compare it in your view.

Looks like I need a bit of self-quotation here.

The geometry we experience in the mirrored image is WRONG/SIMPLIFIED. There's no point adding rendering detail if the geometry doesn't get fixed.